I’ve been busy like crazy as of late. Lots of work, quite a few crafting projects that need to be finished on tight deadlines and still not enough to keep me from starting other stuff just for the heck of it. I don’t have batteries in my camera for proof at the moment, but just to name a few:

Yet another baby blanket for a little girl who is due the day after tomorrow. Not to mention two more blankets after that.

A top secret project whose recipient may be reading this blog so I am not going to really go into it. Let’s just say that it involves intarsia and a certain Captain.

My Undertaking of Grandiose Proportions, which I am now confident is doable so I’ll spill the beans: Neta’s birthday celebration at her daycare center is July 11th. While I love birthdays, I hate that they are equivalent with cheap plastic party favors that fall apart on the way home and industrial snacks and sweets the nutritional value of which would make your toes curl, and not in a good way. So I decided to break the rules. Even though the daycare center gives you a piece of paper listing exactly which crappy industrial foods you are supposed to get at the supermarket, Neta’s birthday is going to be catered with homemade baked goods and fresh fruit, and instead of store bought junk for party favors, each child will receive a sock creature, hand made from a single sock from a heap that has been lying around the house. I will be celebrating my daughter’s birthday with a clear conscience.

Tal’s birthday is on the same day as Neta’s, and I want to make him a little bag of treat, all of which allude to this:

The concept:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name.

On Tuesday night, Tal and I left the kids at my mom’s house and went out to see Dee Dee Bridgewater live at the Holon Theater, as a birthday gift from his parents. After driving up to Tel Aviv from Beer Sheva with both kids by myself, and two weeks of regression back to awful awful sleep at night, I was sure that I would fall asleep during the first ballad, and that would be it.

My acquaintance with Dee Dee Bridgewater so far was mostly through the album “Keeping Tradition” which holds an esteemed place in our 500-strong CD collection. From that I already knew that she is a vocal virtuoso and truly a jazz musician – many jazz singers often leave me feeling that they don’t really have the jazz in them, they just have nice voices and know how to do what they’re told. Female singers in particular often irritate me because they bring the diva pose onto stage with them, when they’re really just vocal technicians.

We managed to put the kids to sleep, get dressed, stop on the way for pizza at one of our old haunts, and hit the road for Holon. Getting to Holon: 15 minutes. Finding a parking spot in Holon: 50 minutes. Running to the theater only to find out that the web posting that the show starts at 21:30 was wrong and that we are in fact already 15 minutes late: priceless.

When we got to our seats, we were glad to find out that the show hadn’t actually started yet.

And then, the musicians take the stage, and start playing a jazzy intro. And then, in she walks, wearing a snakeskin print dress, rocking a bald head and huge blingy gold earrings, and she just brings the house down. What can I say? Such an amazing performer. Such a jazzy sex bomb. The voice, the moves, the attitude. She’s just got it all. And did we mention that she is exactly twice my age? I was born 3 days before her 29th birthday. So help me god if I’m half as awesome as she is now in 29 years.

I’m not going to go into anything more – I’m sure if you want a good review of Dee Dee Bridgewater you can easily find more than one written by people who actually understand what they’re talking about. All I can say is that personally, I was blown away and moved to bits by her.